


Tectonic

by postjentacular



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Getting Together, H/D Food Fair 2018, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Human Plate Draco Malfoy, M/M, Post-Hogwarts, Pre-Slash, Rated T for swearing, Referenced Sex Work, Slurs (Racial and Sexuality), Stag Nights & Bachelor Parties, Sushi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-15
Updated: 2018-10-15
Packaged: 2019-07-13 15:58:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16021226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/postjentacular/pseuds/postjentacular
Summary: In which Draco is the unnoticed centre of attention, Harry's unobservant and, (eventually) they talk.





	Tectonic

**Author's Note:**

> H/D Food Fair 2018 [Prompt #161](https://hd-fan-fair.livejournal.com/139850.html): Human Plate. _After the war, Draco takes any job he can get. When he is hired as a human plate for a party, he thinks nothing of it. That is, until he realises that one of the men eating from him is Harry Potter._
> 
> All the kudos to the mods.
> 
> SPaGed and beta-ed by Spf. Ta ever so. It should go without saying, but all remaining mistakes are mine.

The wine bar in Muswell Hill was a throng of pastel popped collars and faux hawks, and Harry had never felt so out of place. Piers Polkiss – who’d grown from a scrawny rat-faced boy into a scrawny rat-faced man – noticed him first and hollered across the bar like the old friend he wasn’t, “Haz, over here.”

Harry made his way with warranted trepidation around a couple of tiny tables full of marketing executives and account managers, their teetering wine glasses half full of rosé, to the far end of the bar where Piers, Dudley, and a handful of faces he vaguely recognised had gathered. He plastered on his best fake smile and clapped his cousin across the shoulder, “Congrats, Dudley.”

“Thanks,” Dudley said, “whacha drinking?”

“You’re the stag, I’ll get them in. What’s everyone on?”

Piers answered on behalf of the group and Harry dutifully headed to the bar. While he waited for five different variations of a G&T – Piers’ second strike of the evening – he watched another stag party, considerably drunker and in matching t-shirts, be asked to continue their celebrations elsewhere. He thanked Merlin for small mercies, Piers hadn’t gone down the matching outfit route, at least not yet. After tipping the bartender double his usual too-generous amount as recompense for the complete and utter wank of an order, he whispered a sticking charm over the tray and made his way back through the throng.

As he handed out the drinks, Piers lifted his Hendricks and cucumber to begin to propose a toast or, what quickly became apparent when Dudley threatened to wallop him if he didn’t shut up, _another_ toast. Once Big D, always Big D. Harry leaned back in his seat, letting the chat wash over him.

“Right, drink up lads,” Piers commanded, cutting short the conversation. “The night is young and we have places to be.”

“What’s the plan, Polks?” Dudley asked, finishing his Tanqueray, slimline tonic and lime. “Stripper in a cake?”

Piers gave a short sharp bark of a laugh, “Nothing that vulgar. I’ve planned something special to celebrate Big D’s exotic bit of alright.”

“Exotic?” Harry spoke before thinking, Dudley’s bride-to-be was as Home Counties as they came; the mousey personification of Berkshire.

Dudley leaned over, “Her great-grandmother was born in The Raj.”

“Exotic, surely _you_ know what I mean, Haz,” Piers said.

Harry took a long final swig of his pilsner, “Sure.”

Piers led them out onto the street, the late September evening was drawing in and Harry was thankful his leather jacket kept the worst of the chill off without having to resort to his less-than-stellar heating charms. “Cab?” Dudley asked.

“No, gents,” Piers waved him off. “Best if we show up there on foot,” and he headed off down the street expecting the others to follow. They did.

“Haz, old chap,” Piers said, as he fell into step with Harry as they passed Sainsbury’s. “This place we’re going to, it’s kind of a cash only venture, thought you might be best to take care of this.” He pulled a brown envelope from his pocket and tucked it in the front of Harry’s jacket before Harry could protest.

“Why me?”

Piers jogged a couple of steps back to the front of the group leaving Harry and Dudley to bring up the rear. “Probably just because of your job, Har’,” Dudley said. “Nothing personal.”

“What is it you do?” One of the gang asked – possibly Malcolm, thought Harry.

“He’s a copper,” Dudley jumped in.

“ _Allo allo allo, what’s all this then?_ And all that?”

“No,” Dudley shot back, “Our Har’s bit better than that. Bit of a specialist aren’t you? Particular criminals, the weird ones, isn’t that right?”

Harry nodded along with the cover story.

“But he’s off duty tonight,” Piers said, brooking no argument. “So no worries there.”

Harry sighed the sigh of someone who knew the remainder of his evening was destined to be as legally grey as they came.

A short while later, the group slowed and eventually stopped outside an all-night corner shop. The door leading to the flats above the shop was heavy and opened with a solid buzz-thunk over the fritzing crackle of the intercom. Piers led the way down the hallway and up a couple of flights of stairs. At the far end of the second floor hallway he rapped smartly on a nondescript door. The door opened a couple of inches on the chain, closed, then reopened fully to let them in.

The door opened straight into what at one time had been a lounge but had since been turned into a semblance of a bar. Across the far end of the room a dark teak bar took up most of the width of the room; shelves of whisky, vodka and champagne lined the wall. Behind the bar a large man who may as well have been wearing a name badge reading ‘Hired Thug’ stared them down. Two white doors, firmly closed, stood starkly against the rest of the rich decor.

One of the white doors creaked open and a petite blonde woman in a kimono scuttled across the room, “Sit, sit,” she pointed to a pair of sofas by the window as she picked up a tray of champagne flutes from the bar.

“So,” she said handing out the glasses once they were all seated, “your model is being set up at the moment and will be ready shortly. Until then just sit back and enjoy yourselves.” She flashed a toothy grin as fake as her bubblegum pink nails before she disappeared back through the door she’d come from.

“What the hell is this, Polks?” Dudley hissed as soon as the door clicked shut. “This is supposed to be my stag night. You promised it would be fancy, not some warm plonk in an ex-council flat.”

“Yeah, Piers,” possibly-Malcolm agreed. “We paid good money for this.”

“Dudders, lads, have faith in your old chum.” Piers leant back and took a sip of his warm plonk. “It will be worth it; for tonight, I give you,” he sat forward and gave himself a drumroll on the table, “Nantaimori.”

“What?” Dudley asked, as unimpressed as they come.

Piers sat back and rolled his eyes, “Naked. Sushi.”

“So it’s a stripper covered in rice and fish?” One of the Not-Malcolms asked.

“No, Dennis,” Piers snapped, “it is not a stripper covered in rice and fish. Nantaimori is _Art_ and I’ve paid for the very best.”

“So we just look? Where’s the fun in that?”

Piers fixed Dennis with a particularly beady stare, but was stopped from flaying him alive by the timely re-appearance of the woman in the kimono.

“Gentleman,” she began, “your model is ready.” As they got up to follow her across the room she continued, “You’re plate will not speak to you this evening and we would ask that you respect the Art. You _will_ be asked to leave if your behaviour becomes inappropriate.” She paused at the door, hand resting on the handle, “Now if you’d like to take your seats I’ll be in shortly with more drinks.” She pushed the door open and stepped back to let them enter.

As Harry shuffled in at the tailend of the group, he was knocked aside by Piers storming back out of the room. Harry took a seat by the model’s arm, careful not to look and more so not to touch. It was awkward enough just being in the same room. From outside he heard Piers demanding to speak to the manager. Dudley and a couple of the others left the room, presumably to try and calm Piers, leaving Harry and probably-Malcolm sitting awkwardly side-by-side as the naked model lay motionless on the table.

“No you moronic excuse for a human,” Harry heard Piers shout. “It is not that he’s blond, it’s that he’s a _He_.”

Harry sunk further into his chair and tipped his head back focussing on nothing but the swirls of the artex ceiling.

“It’s hardly hygienic.”

“Pardon?” Harry turned to look at probably-Malcolm.

“Eating sushi off his prick, it’s hardly hygienic.”

“Would a pussy be any better?” Harry snapped.

“Well, yeah. A bit.”

“Just a bit?” Harry clarified. “Then it’s not a hygiene issue.”

“No,” Malcolm pushed back from the table and stood up, “It’s a I’m-not-a-fag issue.”

As the door slammed behind Malcolm, Harry heard the plate give a little snort. As he pushed out of his own chair to get up, a fuzzy dark shape on the model’s arm seemed to flicker into existence just out of the corner of his eye. He blinked once, twice, then, under the watchful eyes of skull and serpent, Harry sat back down with a reluctant thump.

“Malfoy,” he said wearily.

The plate ignored him.

“You can quit it now, Malfoy, it’s only me here.”

Outside the room the commotion continued. Inside, all was still except the tiny rise-fall-rise of the plate’s chest which quickened with its every breath making the maki rolls on his nipples wobble infinitesimally.

“Dra-”

The door thudded open interrupting him. “Haz, we’re leaving.” Dudley shouted, too loudly for the silent room, “Dennis knows a club nearby, says the girls are proper mint. Supposed to be one of those metrosexual places so y’know might be some… y’know... for you too.”

Harry nodded noncommittally, but Dudley was gone before it even registered.

“I’ll be outside when you’re done here,” Harry said. He was not surprised to get no response. As he left the room, the hostess bustled in and firmly closed the door behind her. Back in the living room-come-bar the hired-thug-come-manager none-too-gently directed Harry to the front door. Without a word Harry left.

Outside night had fallen, the natural sunlight replaced with the neon-orange haze of London’s light pollution. Harry sat on the edge of the low wall across the road from the flat. Between the cold brick and the sharp breeze which had crept up while he had been inside, crap or not, his warming charm would have to do. He watched the comings-and-goings through the heavy door – from the less-than-salubrious to the downright menacing, the latter setting his auror instincts tingling – until eventually Malfoy stepped out, slamming the door behind him.

Malfoy didn’t spare a second glance at Harry as he turned up his collar against the beginnings of drizzle and took off down the street at a brisk pace. He didn’t break his gait as Harry jogged to catch up with him. “Hey,” Harry said as he drew level and slowed his jog. “How’s it going?”

Malfoy didn't even waste a condescending snort on that, and even now, Merlin knows, he has ample to spare.

“You want to get a drink?” Harry said, aiming for casual and missing by a couple of miles.

“No.”

“I’ll buy,” Harry tried again.

“Definitely no.”

“A coffee?”

“Potter, I don’t want a drink, I don’t want a coffee, or a butterbeer or whatever your next offer was going to be. I didn’t even get paid for this fuckin’ disaster of an evening and I don’t have enough for my bus home tonight. I’ve miles to go in this miserable piss-off rain and this isn’t exactly the glowing company one looks for in a romantic evening stroll.”

“Can’t you just apparate?” Harry asked as if it were the most obvious thing on the planet.

“In case you had forgotten,” Malfoy all but spat, “I don’t have a wand.” Harry looked briefly chagrined, he had forgotten the length of Hawthorn tossed in the box of things from _Then_ that he’d had Kreacher put somewhere out of sight, out of mind. “We’re not all oozing wandless magical prowess, Potter. Some of us can’t get our glamours to stick for the whole evening without a sodding stick to wave about.”

“To get a glamour to stick at all without a wand is really-”

Malfoy didn’t wait for the end of the sentence. He buried his chin deeper into his jacket collar, a jacket too light for an English autumn, and started walking again. Harry turned and went after him.

They managed three whole minutes of silence before Malfoy broke, “Don’t you have a strip club to frequent?”

“Nope,” Harry said, elaborating no further.

They walked on in silence past another row of shops, at least Harry thought it was silence. “Merlin, just spit it out Potter, they can hear you thinking at the end of the road,” Malfoy snapped.

“Why, erm, how…” Harry stumbled over his words before Malfoy shot him a sharp look from under his upturned collar, “Why are you doing _sex work_?” He muttered ‘sex work’ softly as if the very words were tantamount to the act.

“It’s not sex work, Potter,” he said, the same shame missing from his retort. “If it were, I’d be paid better.” He gave a small chuckle, which Harry didn’t return.

“Well it’s not exactly savoury.”

“Oh, I forgot,” Malfoy said lightly, “you didn’t you try any. For future reference, sushi’s all savoury. Even that packet shit from Tesco they're passing off back there.”

A smile flitted over Harry’s face, turning up the edges of his lips before he tamped it back down; the brief lapse didn’t go unnoticed. Harry’s silence needled Malfoy to the end of the road, across the pelican crossing, and half way across the petrol station forecourt they cut through. “I can’t work in the wizarding world because of...” he trailed off and waved his hand, _my history_. “I couldn’t even get squibwork and, of course, you can’t get a proper job in the Muggle world without all sorts of paperwork which I don’t have. You know they wouldn’t even let me put cocking tins of beans on a shelf without numbers and certificates and all that bother?” Harry nodded and gave a little grunt of agreement. “So it was this, or well,” he shrugged, “nothing.”

They walked on further, past the discount carpet outlet and onto the flyover, devoid of people, peppered only with the occasional minicab hairing past and the buzz of the neon orange street lights that marked out their path in 120 feet chunks. “I’m not stupid you know,” Malfoy said, “I know it isn’t ‘art’ but it pays the rent. Usually. And,” he gave a little smirk, “I’m the cheapest on the menu so your friend Piers is a lying shitbag.”

Harry knew.

“Is it weird?” Harry asked, as the rumbling of a lorry passing beneath them faded into the distance.

Malfoy shrugged, “Usually I just have to stand around in my boxers pouring second-rate Cava and calling it Champagne.” Harry could hear the disdain – you could take the boy out of the Manor. “I’ve only done _that_ a couple of times.”

“The plate thing?” Harry asked.

“Mm hmm,” Malfoy nodded. “Tonight was the first time for men. Probably the last as well. I don’t imagine the management want a repeat of this evening’s fiasco.”

“Shame. It must be easier with guys.” Malfoy cocked an eyebrow in question, “With woman you must worry about… you know… your lettuce leaf rising.” A rush of blood filled Harry’s cheeks.

Malfoy snorted once, “Oh Potter,” twice. “If I were able to get it up for a woman I would’ve been a well-heeled househusband by now.”

Harry gurgled inarticulately and covered it with a cough, Malfoy didn’t seem to notice.

“Astoria Greengrass was being lined up for me,” he continued.

“WWN’s Astoria?”

“The very same; lovely girl, or so I’ve heard,” Malfoy continued. “Our fathers agreed we’d produce the perfect heir. Rampant homosexuality notwithstanding. I’m sure the Weasel Matriarch thought the same about you and the Weaselette.”

“Yeah,” Harry agreed, “but there’s a whole slew of brothers, it’s easy enough to switch one for another.”

Malfoy cast a quick glance sideways and caught Harry’s grin, “You made a joke‽ You joke? How very unPottylike.”

Harry bashed Malfoy’s shoulder with his own, “Sometimes.”

“Sometimes is good,” Malfoy returned with a flash of a grin of his own.

Forty minutes later the streets became noisier, dirtier, with a lingering smell of deep-fried something, _everything_ , but Harry barely noticed. He did notice how Malfoy’s eyes flashed to life when his stories reached their peak, how _‘my father’_ was spat with the same venom that _‘Potter’_ once was and, how Malfoy’s little smirk set the snitches low in his belly fluttering.

As they passed a bus stop, its last remaining plastic window warped and melted, a pair of teens hunched in the dark shadows hollered “Gaaaay.” Malfoy didn’t even falter in his retelling of the late nights spent spelling _Potter Stinks_ badges just-so, flicking the v’s in their general direction and only coming to a stop a hundred yards or so later outside an unremarkable door. “This is me,” he said.

It’s possibly the least-Malfoy place Harry could have imagined. He presumed the Manor never had so much a hairline crack in a pane of glass, and certainly not a damp piece of cardboard taped over what must have been at one time a window. It shook Harry back to reality, this wasn’t a night out with a friend, this was Malfoy’s job.

“I should…” Malfoy pushed the door open.

Harry spoke again before he got inside, “Sorry, I should pay you for tonight, seeing as how, well… you didn’t get… and it was my friends that ruined it.”

“They’re your friends?”

Harry looked up, of the responses he’d expected, that was not one of them. To be shouted at, to have the cash ripped from his hands, all plausible, but that? “One’s a familial obligation, barely. The rest come along with him. A sorta package deal type thing.”

“Potter,” Malfoy shook his head, “you don’t have to keep them. Especially if you didn’t choose them. Trust me on that.” He turned to go inside when he heard the rustle of cash behind him. “I don’t want your money, Potter,” he said as he looked back over his shoulder, then added quieter, “I’m not a charity case.”

“I don’t think you’re a charity case,” Harry replied, not putting the cash away. He could see Malfoy try not to look at it, but failing. “If it makes you feel any better, none of it is mine. I think Piers would be particularly appalled to know you I gave it to you.”

Malfoy gave a little smile, “Well if it helps Saint Potter get revenge who am I to say no?” Harry handed over the wad of cash and Malfoy squirrelled it away deep in one of his too tight pockets. Malfoy nodded his thanks, “So do you want to, erm, come up?” Malfoy quavered.

Harry shook his head, “No. I mean I do, but it’s too weird tonight. I’ve just paid you and I don’t want you to think there’s any obligations.”

Malfoy made a face.

“I know, I know, that’s not your job but, it, erm, you know…” Harry trailed off and scrubbed his hand through his hair, “Look, I like you, I think, maybe - shit! - let me start again. I want to ask you on a date, a real date with coffee and a movie and maybe dinner with proper plates.”

“A date‽ Why?”

“Why? Why does anyone go on a date? Because you’re sharp and clever and have a great arse and I want to get to know you.”

“And you don’t just want to eat sushi of my bits?”

Harry screwed his nose up, “Nah, call me old fashioned, but sushi doesn’t really do it for me. Especially not in front of my cousin. Chocolate sauce on the other hand?”

Malfoy shot him a fiendish grin, “And if I wanted to do the licking?”

“You know, Draco, I’m sure that can be arranged.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! All comments are extremely welcome either here or on [Livejournal](https://hd-fan-fair.livejournal.com/149499.html).
> 
>  **Standard fanfic disclaimer:** If you recognise it, it belongs to J.K. Rowling; this is just fanfic for nothing other than entertainment purposes.


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